Not much? You can buy a crossbow from 3-4 places for a few plat (River elf village in particular is a few gold) that does the same thing, unless I'm misremembering the time and those are 8/9 instead.

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I'm a badger, I be badgerin'

There's a couple things that have, in my opinion, made the lower RT crossbows much less valuable. First, you can craft sling ammo that works very well with super low RT stonebows (diamondique, maybe others). Second, long RT crossbows have a type of exp bonus, which reduces the need to use low RT crossbows for training purposes. Lastly, we know that crossbow crafting is coming (can't believe I'm saying that and believing it after this many years, but I have faith) and it's entirely possible that low RT crafting will be doable.

>It seems that the future of rare items will be outdone by high level crafting.

Yes and no!

http://elanthipedia.org/w/index.php/Tier

Gear follows a rough tier order now. Basically tier 1 is regular store gear, tier 2 is capped forged steel, and tiers progress from there along rare metals and magical effects (a magic effect will bump up a weapon 1-2 tier categories alone usually, so a store bought crossing broadsword with a light enchantment would be tier 2-3), though I think we cap at tier 6 right now, not tier 8, so that link is decidedly not helpful.

But basically the GMs build items similarly to how they would be tiered; store items are going to be tier 1, possibly verging close to tier 2. Free fest items will be tier 1-2. Free auctions will have some good high tier gear.

Pay fests will have stuff from tier 1-2, but most of it will be comparable to forged gear, possibly a little better (like lighter than normal, or with HC stats for MC durability), and pay auctions will tend to have tier 3-6 gear.

Plus, for the most part, you can find rare metal in the mining system now (kertig, harulan, etc.) the metals you can't find are tier 6 like tyrium, and you can't find/buy tier 6 weapon templates like katanas or tekkans.

It's a pretty complex system, but it boils down to we no longer have to wait on GMs to maybe release a weapon that's better than crossings, and then have to go through and meticulously appraise and weight every weapon at a fest/event to see. We can have someone forge up a weapon at the weight we want, with the noun we want, using whatever metals we want to get whatever stats we want, assuming we have the cash.

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I'm a badger, I be badgerin'

>btw it does not take 7 seconds to load even medieval crossbows unless you're drunk or stoned (its legal in someone's state).

What about one handed, with a shield strapped to your other arm and covered in armor, while getting attacked by a wild boar? Can you still do that in under 7 seconds if your drunk?

-Master Ndin

Depends on the crossbow. If it is a crank type, rather than a pull type, it could very well take a few seconds to pull back the bow.

You also have to remember it doesn't take 1 second to load/aim/fire a shortbow in real life. Or to fling throwing knives, or do a lot of things. But we have to scale; part of the benefit of certain items is faster-than-base-speed transaction speeds.

Part of the penalty of other items is slower-than-base-speed transaction speed. Crossbows, for example, take a hit since you can load-and-stow, as well as use one with a shield, and some other minor differences from stick bows. Stick bows have speed and in theory should do less damage per shot but have higher overall DPS.

Doesn't work like that in DR, never has, but that's the game design theory. Fast and lots of low damage, or slow and large single shots. DR's ammo system crapped all over that 10 years ago and hasn't ever been fixed (indeed, crossbow ammo is deliberately crippled compared to stickbow ammo).

It can't possibly, for example, take me 6 seconds to swing a sword in combat. It's not even likely a single combat move would take 6 seconds, even if we're encompassing an attack/recover/rest type move or kata or something.

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I'm a badger, I be badgerin'

The skill-based crossbow roundtime reductions remain.